European Virtual Library of Mathematics
General presentation
Thierry Bouche
Cellule MathDoc & institut Fourier, Université de Grenoble Electronic Publication Committee of the
European Mathematical Society
Towards a Digital Mathematics Library Grand Bend, Ontario,-July
The mathematical literature
Stakes
Mathematicalvalidatedliterature never becomes obsolete
Old results are not superseded by newer ones: they are their foundation It’s valid only as awhole, building a wide network of references It’s useful to other sciences in anasynchronousfashion
It must be carefully archived, indexed and preserved It must be accessible over the long term
The mathematical literature
The reference library
We thus need a reference library, which should be exhaustive
up-to-date well organized widely open
easy to use for non-mathematicians
Paper OK? (libraries, ILL, doc. delivery, union catalogs, reviewing DB. . . ) Electronic Still a dream! (WDML)
The mathematical literature
Time scale
Instant preprint circulation (labs, arXiv, email, home pages) Actual publication delayed-years
Publication’s goals: prestige, attribution, quality rating. . . To secure the version of the work suitable for further reference About% of citations in today’s bibliographies are
more thanyears old
About% of citations in today’s bibliographies are more thanyears old
The mathematical literature
Size
A rough estimate on the size of the whole corpus of written mathematics in the occidental scientific tradition since Euclid:
million items were published spanning<million pages
,new items appear each year
<% published before
>% published after
% journal articles,% chapters in collective books,% books
math-only journals alive,with math articles
million pages digitised?% of core journals available digitally?
The mathematical E-literature
Needs
Going electronicshouldbe a wonderful asset for opening new ways of using the mathematical corpus beyond old boundaries.
The main infrastructure required would provide the basic features of the reference library, plus e-only add-ons
This means
A global (distributed) facility dedicated to archive newly published or digitised material
An up-to-date registry of all available resources
Mechanisms for interlinking the holdings with existing and future infrastructures Seamless navigation across the whole corpus
The mathematical E-literature
The digital downside
Electronic media has downsides for scholars and librarians Costs increase!
Many new access barriers (copyright, licences, DRMs) No standards for interfaces, file formats, etc.
Mainstream publishing is not adapted to mathematical content. . .
“Value” is measured by counts (notscientific value)
The mathematical E-literature
Disorganization
Many paper items are missing a digital counterpart,but
Many digital items are duplicated among various providers,while Many collections are split across providers,and
Collection holders are very volatile
=⇒ Managing an exhaustive and up-to-date access requires zillions of subscriptions, and superhuman monitoring capabilities
The Virtual Library of Mathematics
Vision (
'Cornell, 2002)
A reference digital mathematics library should asemble as much as possible of the digital mathematical corpus in order to
preserveit over the long term, make itavailable online atreasonable cost,
in the form of anauthoritativeandenduringdigital collection, growingcontinuously with publisher supplied new content,
augmentedwith sophisticated search interfaces and interoperability services, developed and curated by a network ofinstitutions
Challenge: define the hilighted terms in such a way that a sufficient diversity of
The Virtual Library of Mathematics
Previous work on coordination
John Ewing. “Twenty Centuries of Mathematics: Digitizing and Disseminating the Past Mathematical Literature”.Notices of the AMS,():–, August.
Digital Mathematics Library. NSF planning project (-, Cornell University Library) “toward the establishment of a comprehensive, international, distributed collection of digital information and published knowledge in mathematics”.
Mathematical Knowledge Management meetings (– ) + DML workshops (– ):
technical challenges.
EMS’ EoI to the European Commission (), supported pilot implementation proposals to EC programmes (–: FP, eContentplus, CIP ICT PSP. . . )
AMS/MSRI proposal to the Moore foundation () IMU support (–: Vision, Best practices)
The Virtual Library of Mathematics
Existing content
America JSTOR (,items), project Euclid (,), CMS (,) Asia DML-JP (,items), China ??
Europe EuDML? (,items)
Germany ERAM/JFM, GDZ, ELibM (,items)
France Gallica-Math, NUMDAM, CEDRAM, TEL (,items) Poland ICM/BWM (,items)
Portugal SPM/BNP (,items) Spain DML-E (,items) Czech Rep. DML-CZ (,items)
Russia RusDML (,items) Bulgaria BulDML (,items)
Serbia No formalised project (,items) Switzerland SwissDML (,items)
Commercial ,items?
Small/medium CUP journals, OUP, Hindawi, WdG, Wiley, T&F. . .
The Virtual Library of Mathematics
What remains to be done?
Give up the world-wide top-down approach to the effort Identify a core group of stakeholders with different backgrounds willing to go ahead
Learn from success stories of existing projects and generalise them Call the scientific community to support and help shape the effort Define balanced, inclusive policies for an ever-growing
sustainable infrastructure
Get much better return on investment for Research organizations through European momentum
Give a new impetus to research communities in Digital libraries and Mathematical knowledge management to design a much more powerful
